George Martin - Old Mars

In the poignant story that follows, we learn that living caught between two worlds can be difficult and painful—especially when you’re the only one who can see one of them.

MAARTIN XAI GRABBED HIS COVERALLS FROM THE HOOK BY the door, checked the charge on his breather, and headed down the street to the public lock, the one closest to the garden domes. Outside, the usual afternoon winds swirled, twisting dust devils across the red-and-ochre plain that stretched beyond the dome, bounded by the spires that edged the canal. A half dozen dust devils skittered across the dull green-brown of the cyan fields, raising thin trails of red dust.

That’s where Dad was, off with the other grown-ups, planting more cyan fields where they found enough water, down deep. Making oxygen.

Dad couldn’t see it the way it really was. None of them could. He strolled toward the garden dome until he was out of range of the lock cams, tasting Mars on his tongue, even as breather air filled his lungs. The dust devils changed course and zigzagged toward him and he smiled. Soreh, who ran the weigh room, had been complaining last night as she drank beer with Dad that the dust devils hung around the settlement, that they followed her. Dad had laughed at her.

She was right, but he didn’t tell her. She’d told Dad that he must have gotten brain damage in the blast.

Out of cam range, he hiked away from the low garden domes. Have to stop and check the lines on the way back. Not now. The leading pair of dust devils converged as he reached the edge of the cyan field, their passage a dry scuff in the thin atmosphere. He stopped, braced himself as they twirled around him. Let his eyes go blurry.

He stood on a mosaic plaza, the tiles of shimmering green, ruby, and deep azure laid out in swirling arcs radiating from a cluster of crystal basins. Water leaped in the center of each basin, giving off the tinkle of glass chimes as it splashed back down, overflowing the rim and trickling across the plaza in snaking streams. The two Martians stood in front of him. He smiled at them, recognizing them. He’d named them Rose and Shane because he liked the names. He wasn’t sure that “name” was something that they understood. It wasn’t like they talked in words.

Tall and skinny as the winter trees he’d seen vids of from Earth, they pirouetted, bathing him in their smiles. Well, it felt like a smile. He pirouetted with them, laughing without his mouth because they heard that. Their faces had looked weird at first, with a ridge pushing out down the middle from forehead to chin, so that their elongated, cloudy eyes were set back on either side of the ridge. Their mouths were perfectly round, mostly closed with pale lips, although now and again they opened wide to show darkness and nothing like teeth that he could see. He had no idea what they ate, had never seen a Martian eating.

They fluttered their long, six-fingered hands, and he followed them toward the canal along a long, curving street paved with azure tiles edged with silver so that it flashed in the sunshine, a ghostly image overlaid on red dust and rock. Tall, twisted spires of buildings rose on either side and the tall, slender Martians strolled in and out, crossing the spaces between the buildings on narrow, arching ribbons of crystal, like graceful tightrope walkers he’d seen in vids of old-days circuses. Only, you could see in the circus videos that the tightrope walkers were afraid of falling.

Nobody here was afraid.

Five more Martians had joined them, fluttering their hands as they strolled along the azure path in a ghostly shimmer, their half-length robes fluttering in the breeze, a shifting rainbow of color, like an oil slick on the air. Small thorny plants covered with pink blossoms lined the path here, barely visible in the noonday sun, and the spires were less crowded. Maartin stopped, fascinated, as one of the plants began to rock back and forth. It slowly worked thick rootlets free of the soil. The rootlets, pink and fleshy, flexed like fingers, stretching and elongating, reaching away from the path to bury themselves in the reddish soil. Slowly, the rootlets contracted, pulling the plant away from the neat row along the path.

A Martian hurried up, long fingers of one hand fluttering furiously. The other hand held a slender black wand. The Martian poked the tip of the wand into the soil where the plant had anchored its rootlets. The rootlets whipped out of the soil, coiling tightly under the plant’s thorny branches. It shook its dull green leaves with a threatening rustle and all its thorns slowly aligned to point at the Martian with the wand. The Martian shook its fingers at the plant and poked the wand tip into the soil again. Slowly, the rootlets extended on the far side, and the plant began to drag itself back to the path and the space it had left between its neighbors. Just like the school av’. Maartin covered a smile because moving his mouth made his Martian friends finger-laugh at him. The plant looked defeated, its leaves drooping slightly, its thorns no longer erect.

A finger of urgency prodded him and he looked up. The group of Martians had stopped and were looking back at him. Rose stepped forward. It was her urgency he’d felt. Her. He shrugged as he hurried to catch up. She felt like a her, and he wasn’t sure why, but she did. She looked the same as Shane and he felt like a he.

The canal lay ahead. Towers soared gracefully along its rippling expanse. Barges floated on the water, moving slowly along. When he sneaked out at dusk, the water looked almost solid, but in the sunshine, you could see the empty bed through the barges and the water. Colorful awnings flapped in the breeze, and, in their shade, Martians reclined on footed cushions, their fingers flickering in conversation. A trio stood at the bow of one barge, blowing into polished and twisted horns that branched into multiple mouths. He couldn’t hear anything, but they gave out a soft blue smoke and suddenly he was filled with gentle feelings, sort of like the way he felt at night, when Mom used to tuck in the covers and say good night. He swallowed, and Rose drifted back to walk close to him, floating along on her long toes, as if she was nearly weightless. She waved her fingers in front of him and her head dipped, mouth opening briefly.

Sharing his sorrow. He blinked. They had never paid this much attention to him before. Sometimes they walked with him, but there was no … communication. He felt them some, but they usually didn’t really feel him .

Maybe that was changing.

He closed his eyes, remembering. Mom and her gentle hands, her touch on his face, the way she laughed when Dad looked at her. A tear slid down his face and he wiped it away, Mars dust gritty on his skin, his eyes on the crystal spires, the sparkling water of the canal. Mom would believe him. That he saw … this . The way it really was.

If she was here.

An explosion shattered the quiet, and Maartin flinched as an invisible hand shoved him. The canal, the barges, vanished. On the far side of the canal, where the Rim rose against the pale greenish sky, a burst of red dust fountained upward and a narrow and elegant tower of rock dissolved into a waterfall of pulverized fragments. More clouds of dust billowed outward, and a faint thump followed. Dust devils skittered around him, zigzagging angry patterns across the ground, and he blinked, his eyes tearing as they filled with dust.

Miners. He swallowed. Hard. Felt the swallow turn to stone as it sank into his belly. He blurred his eyes, tried to see the spires again, the barges, through the drifting curtains of dust. He could see them to the left, to the right, way down the canal. Martians stood on the barges, fingers flickering and pointing.